


A sense of self, or lack thereof

by bloodandcream



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Existential Crisis, Gen, Mild Self Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-28
Updated: 2014-05-28
Packaged: 2018-01-26 21:09:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1702628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bloodandcream/pseuds/bloodandcream
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Castiel first began to notice the weft of his identity at large shifting, he thought it was simply that, fluidity, change, the re-assessment of belief in light of new truths.</p><p>( Vaguely mid season 9 head canon from Castiel’s perspective )</p>
            </blockquote>





	A sense of self, or lack thereof

Castiel sits, alone and quiet, in a dark corner of the bunker as the night ticks on with the rhythmic sounds of a clock dial in the kitchen faintly keeping pace. Sam is in bed, and neither of them know quite where Dean is. Time is running out, as the clock seems keen to remind him. There are so many things running out, grains of sand lost between the cracks of his fingers, and he’s not sure which is the most important of them, which he should be grasping for.

His trench coat lays across the back of a chair next to him, while he is securely wedged in between the chair and a bookshelf, a quiet unobtrusive corner he’s made. The cuffs of his white shirt are rolled up past the elbow, folded neatly and precisely. He sits on the floor between the furniture with his knees drawn up to his chest and his arms wrapped around them, picking at the scabs and sores that have started to surface along his arms. They itch around his waist as well, and down his thighs. But he picks at his arms now. It’s beginning. He knows what it means and he knows that time is running out. Stolen grace is burning through his vessel.

It’s far more disconcerting this time. Perhaps he simply has too much on his mind. But that’s a lie, there’s always been too much on his mind. No, somehow, somewhere along the way a little maggot of paranoia has burrowed into his mind and lain it’s eggs. Castiel picks at the sore, unperturbed by the sharp pain as a scab comes free at the edges or the throbbing once it’s been ripped off, unconcerned with small rivulets of blood that wetly make their way down wherever gravity suggests. Castiel picks absentmindedly, quietly, wondering who he even is anymore. He’s not entirely certain he’s known who he was for a very long time now.

The realization of the loss of his identity is more recent than the loss of his identity, he can state that. Granted, people change, angels even can change, one’s identity is something fluid although the common line of thought is that within each life there is a kernel of essentia, the soul or what have you, the core of identity which remains the same, it is an identifier and a marker, it is supposed to be something comforting. Everything else, strands of memory and constructions of belief, are woven around this kernel to shape the identity at large. These less consequential matters can be stripped or warped or remade. Identity is an interesting matter.

When Castiel first began to notice the weft of his identity at large shifting, he thought it was simply that, fluidity, change, the re-assessment of belief in light of new truths. When he met the Winchester’s, fought for them, bled for them, died for them, he knew his ideological structure and the sections of his identity comprised of it were changing indelibly. But he of course believed that the kernel of his identity that was solidly and uniquely him was still such a thing.

The matter started to bleed out a little when he was brought back to life, presumably by his father but he couldn’t be particularly certain on that matter. His vessel had been reconstructed although Jimmy Novak’s soul did not pulse in it anymore, Castiel could only hope the man that gave his body for an angel had found peace and his own heaven. But Castiel felt slightly different, like things had been moved slightly to one side. Reconstructing his identity was a matter that would have to be put on hold, however, given the circumstances after that, there were wars to be fought and wages to be made. He had no time to take stock.

Bargains were struck, and souls were sold - on loan Crowley had said - and they could give Castiel the power he needed to settle matters with Raphael. It felt strange, stretched tight, to take so many souls within himself. Every now and then they would flicker against him, seep into him, rainwater making mud with dirt. Souls were those kernels of identity miniscule and adamantium that held the unwavering identity of self. To corral so many of them within his larger divinity was no small task. He would be lying to say they did not affect him, though he liked to think he did not let it show.

Although the realization of betrayal in the brothers’ eyes cut deep to his bone, deep enough he had thought it touched the kernel of his soul, Castiel did what had to be done. Sometimes it was hard to gain perspective through the miasma of souls inside of him, but he should hold no qualms in backstabbing a demon, in seizing the power he needed to set matters right, solid in the conviction that his identity was a righteous one, strong enough to withstand corruption, wise enough to restore balance.

Oh, how wrong had he been.

A few million human souls from hell had swelled and raged like a rain fed river against the damns Castiel constructed to keep them out of his soul. All the souls in purgatory, all the sharp hungry souls, they were a tempest, a hurricane, a monsoon, there was no keeping them out. Castiel tried to wrap his soul up tight, to keep the kernel of his identity high and dry, he had thought he could but when he began to wake up with no memories of where his vessel had been and when sores began to split open his physical body from the seams, he began to realize his mistake.

He wondered if he was them now, and them he, a multitude in singularity. Could an identity be comprised of the cacophonous voices of many. Was God not the entirety of existence as a simultaneous expression.

When they ripped him apart, drowned him, bled from him, shredded and lashed the weft of his soul till it was raw and broken open, he lost the kernel of his identity.

By what power he survived he still doesn’t know, still harbors his doubts. His age old identity of ‘Castiel angel of the lord’ was barely revived before it was cast aside again, being battered around and aside it’s a wonder he still has faded tatters of who he used to be.

There was perhaps a miniscule trace of Lucifer’s grace in Sam, mostly it was corruption, a construction, Sam’s mind seemed to have woven it into his identity and integrated it as reality. There will always be some lingering amount of grace left after an angel vacates or is forced from it’s vessel. Castiel pulled this out, trying to extract all the tainted dark parts that were Sam but not Sam with it as well, take them into himself, what was another identity in there anyway.

Everything was a red haze then, even the barest lingering trace of Lucifer was overwhelmingly powerful. Castiel was uncertain, if what few moments of lucidity he had, if he would ever be able to temper that force. He believed he would never be able to expel it, thus the only option was to weave it into the larger construct of his soul, and attempt to barricade the small kernel of his most essential away from it. It was madness, sense of time and purpose and physical reality lost, everything within him fractured glass, mirrors, prisms, they reflected the light of the external and broke it into scattered reflections. He didn’t think he’d make it out of his own mind.

But then he heard it. The word of God. The awakening of a prophet. Powers shifting and realigning in existence at large. It called to him.

It felt almost as though he were a fledgling angel listening to his father eons ago, nothing but loyalty and love wrapped around his soul, his existence a clear and bright sort of thing. It made him realize that there was still something however minute of that left inside of him, some core essentia. He clung to these shreds of identity and clawed his way back.

Life was a whirlwind again, of questions and doubts, the pain of reconfiguration. Of course, he had to clean up what messes he had made, even if his identity was so far scattered from what it had been when it had made the mess to where it was now that he felt like the him existing in the now was not the same one that had made the mess in the then. Time was a tricky thing, as well as identity.

Castiel had nothing but good intentions, and he was convinced this time if he did not act on them with violence behind it that he could do better this time. But that was not the way these matters could be resolved, as much as Dean tried to explain this to him, he held out as long as he could. Purgatory carved another few layers from his identity, pulled them apart, sewed them back on.

There was someone else in his head with him. Someone pulling strings. Someone with a white smile in a white room. It took far too long to realize he was not who he thought he was, that his actions were not his own. But for as inverted as his identity had been as of late, perhaps it was not so surprising that he couldn’t even recognize himself. He tried desperately, tinged with panic and confusion, to press his palms around the smallest kernel of self he could hope to keep together, tried desperately to define some facet of his identity that had always been and always would be his.

After he had broken her control, running and hiding with a tablet he would keep away, keep hidden keep safe, she found him anyway and she told him something. Naomi told him he had been there, centuries ago, in Egypt when they slaughtered the first borns. He couldn’t remember it, and he didn’t want to believe her words were true. How many times had they torn out parts of his mind, how many memories was he missing, how many were false. It was his soul they were playing with. All the memories of existence and the belief’s constructed on experience were what cradled the soul and shaped it, wove into it, comprised it’s identity.

Castiel was losing ground in his mud slick fight to hold on to a sense of self.

Despite lies and doubts, lost moments and manipulations, despite the taint of multitude and Lucifer that he could still feel like old wound in the depth of his soul, Castiel held his shrinking kernel and at it’s core was the truth of his existence as an angel. Something he had always been and always would be. There was not much else he knew about himself these days, other than the restless incessant need to help. His own good intentions, which failed him time and time again, were used against him. His grace, his truth as an angel, a facet of his identity woven tight in the depths of his soul, was ripped from him.

And he fell, and he fell, and he fell.

They all fell though. His brother’s and sister’s, his companions, his friends and foes, he watched them as they fell, wings burning away, crashing into physical existence. Many lost their lives, but most that fell remained as they were, angels, they had grace, they still were as they were but in need of a vessel now in this plane of existence. Castiel, he fell well and truly, he fell from heaven and he fell from grace and he fell from his sense of self.

The pang of loss was sharp and distressing, although the danger of his situation kept him distracted. What now could he call himself, what, and who, and why. The resurgence of questions that kept beating at his will with a ferocity these past years were spreading spider web cracks and fissures till he felt he was on the verge of collapse. Could a vessel survive with no identity to hold it up. Was not the soul the skeleton of the mind, was not the identity it’s spine keeping it upright.

Castiel died again, and was revived. He wondered if memories, if wisps of identity, bled out in death and failed to return on revival, if they would be lost like lost memories one didn’t even think to ask after ,for how could you inquire after something you have forgotten.

It never seemed to stop. Despite his attempts to restructure his identity in a normal life, a peaceful life, a life full of meaning in mundane commonality. Still they found him, and again he was backed into a corner, beaten bloody on the cusp of death his only thought on the mess he had made and the problems he had caused and Castiel made another leap. He stole another angel’s grace. It was a horrible thing. He may have swallowed the souls of humans and monsters before, but this, this was sacrilege.

It twisted through him and filled the spider web cracks already there, it beat against him and made new ones, he could bend it and shape it to his will to a degree. But it was not his and it never would be. He knew this very well by now, he had learned his lesson. Nonetheless it fused to his soul, burrowed down and circled that tiny speck of a kernel that was left of his identity. It was an angel’s grace and it thrummed in recognition, he could understand it so much better and that made it so much worse, he could still hear the echoes of the angel from whom it was wrenched, still feel the etchings of memory and identity within it’s white hot power. When he had taken in the other souls they were foreign to him, other, and though they exerted themselves on his identity and changed him, he could not truly understand them for what they had been. This however was different, and it was increasingly perplexing to his sense of direction and self.

Castiel was beginning to worry that he did not have an identity, that the speck of a kernel of the core of his soul was a mote of dust, perhaps he had dropped it somewhere along the way, perhaps it was hollow, perhaps despite his desire to will a solid and real identity for himself it was simply an illusion. His sense of self had been so warped and torn, remade time and again, it was a moth eaten thing, dirty and grimy, he couldn’t even see what it had been for all the stains and all the holes.

The question of lack of self, lack of certainty, led to uncomfortable questions on reality as a whole and his perception of it. But it was not as though he would be around much longer to ruminate on these matters. This stolen grace was not intended for his vessel, and it was burning right through.

Perhaps he was fevered with the ghosts of souls coalescing and dispersing through the expanses of his mind, lost in all the things he had been and all the things he had thrown away. It was all right though, Castiel thought, as he sat with his knees to his chest picking open the scabs that reminded him of his wrongness, because time was winding down anyway.


End file.
